THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170339
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 42 lines
A Richmond foundation has awarded Eastern Virginia Medical School $900,000 to support a program that helps students learn to work well with patients.
The Theresa A. Thomas Memorial Foundation will pay to operate the clinical skills program for three years. In honor of the gift, EVMS will rename its program the Theresa A. Thomas Professional Skills Teaching and Assessment Center.
The skills program, started in 1994, allows students to work on ``standardized patients'' - actors hired by the school and trained to behave like real patients.
Medical students are monitored as they diagnose and treat these patients. The students may stop the examination to ask questions of faculty members, or teachers may interrupt with instructions. Students may repeat diagnostic techniques until they feel comfortable.
The students are graded not only on technical issues, like correctly diagnosing the problem, but also on demeanor - how they question, comfort and instruct the patient.
Students learn how to cope in tense situations and how to handle people with social and behavioral problems.
The clinical skills training program is part of a larger effort at EVMS and elsewhere to train more family doctors and help overcome a shortage of general practice physicians.
Government health officials, medical school administrators and insurance industry leaders have said the United States suffers from having too few family doctors and too many specialists.
To change this in Virginia, EVMS has been working closely with the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, the University of Virginia's medical school in Charlottesville and state government.
The clinical skills program ``reflects the commitment of EVMS to primary care,'' said Charles L. Reed, president of the Thomas Foundation board, in a prepared statement.
The foundation awarding the money was established 21 years ago by the estate of George D. Thomas, a Richmond-area businessman. It is named in memory of his wife. by CNB